Until We Get It Right
by Initial A
Summary: Happily ever after comes in many forms, across many lifetimes, you just have to look for it.


She's seven and _happily ever after_ is only for fairy tales and princesses on television. She's been with one family for only a month before being sent away. "Too difficult," she'd heard them say. "She screams in the night and we don't know what to do, it bothers the other children." She learns that dreams are for those who are _loved_, who have _home_.

He's seventeen and _happily ever after_ is wind in the sails of the fastest ship in any realm with his brother at his side. It's adventure on every horizon, it's bringing glory and honor to the kingdom - and if he secretly dreams of ballads sung in his name, well, that stays between himself and the gods.

She's fifteen and it's a mother who wants to be her sister, because she knows Emma's too old to need mothering. It's a ring from a prize machine during her first trip to an amusement park, a sympathetic ear, clothes that fit her properly for the first time since she started growing again. It's a glimmer of hope.

He's twenty-five and it's a woman yearning for freedom. It's charcoal impressions of his men on parchment, a song in the wind from the bow, the crash of swords as he teaches her to hold her own in a fight. It's making his brother's ship a home again, mapping the stars, and whispered affections in the night. It's a breath of new life.

She's nearly eighteen and it's gone, like her baby, like her boyfriend, like her 'sister', like everything she's ever known. She stays in Tallahassee for two years as hope begins to taste like ash in her mouth. She's twenty when the light of hope flickers and dies. _Happily ever after_ is for fairy tales and princesses, and she is neither.

He's lost count when it might be a boy, _her_ boy, a lost one trying to find home. He takes the boy in, careful and kind, and feels what he hasn't for years: hope. Hope for the family Milah wanted, hope for adventure once more, hope for redemption in the eyes that look like hers. But the boy has been his father's for too long and the hope dies when Bae turns his back and flees to the island. _Happily ever after _isn't in the cards for him, not until the Crocodile is dead and gone.

She's twenty-eight and there's a boy in her apartment claiming to be hers, the baby she let go so long ago. He's talking about _happily ever afters_ and _evil queens_ and _Snow freaking White _and the only thing she can think is '_Maybe this is where my hope went, into this little boy_'.

He doesn't care and it's a dagger he'll never find, sinking into a man with scales for skin. He doesn't care and it consumes him. As long as Cora holds up her end of the deal, he'll do whatever she asks, as long as he can find his _happily ever after._

She's twenty-eight and there's this family that claims to be hers. There's a mother with tears in her eyes who gently kisses her forehead, a father who cradles her head like she's the most precious thing and he's afraid to let her go. They're her age and the way they look at her makes her want to run away and hide. But something inside whispers for her to stay, because this might just be what _home_ feels like.

He can't remember and there's a woman who could kill a man with a glance. She wears leather and breeches, she swings a sword like a club, she beats pirates over the head with a compass. She saves his life a few times, she steals his ship, she makes him wonder what Milah might think of the man he's become. He's ashamed to realize that Milah would loathe him like this. Milah would want him to live, to love again. It's Milah that makes him turn the ship around, but it's Emma who reminds him that he still has a beating heart.

She's twenty-nine and there's a man at her door. He kissed her two days ago and gave her a memory potion yesterday. She kind of hates him for destroying what she thought was her _happily ever after_, her son and a man she really thought she could marry. But that man's gone, a flying monkey in the Land Without Magic, and she's left with the bitter reminder that even though she's from a land of fairy tales and born a princess, she's not fated for _happily ever after_.

There's another year added to his lifetime that he'd rather forget because it didn't have _her_. He's pulled from her yet again because of the darkness in his past, a trick he should have known better than to fall for, a curse on his lips meant to take what makes her shine so bright. But she takes the curse anyway, because he nearly dies and part of him hopes she saved him out of more than just the goodness of her heart. Yet his hopes die a little more when she's distant again, the magic that once gave her the softest of glows gone, and the witch nearly succeeds in her plans. He doesn't know if he can mend himself again if (when) she leaves for New York again.

She's twenty-nine and dancing at her first royal ball. She's clumsy and unsure and there's so much that could go wrong, but he's by her side, encouraging her and leading her down the right paths as he always does. Here, in the land of their birth, maybe she can let herself believe in _happily ever after_. And at home, when he tells her his home is gone so that she might find hers… for the first time in a very, very long time she feels _hope_.

They're together and it doesn't matter. It might be stealing her onion rings at lunch, or teaching her boy to sail. It might be eating dinner on Sunday nights with her parents and her brother and her son. It might be teaching him how to use the internet or the way his face lights up when she and Belle explain that _yes_, you can borrow as many library books as you want. It might be the way he looks at her like she's hung the stars, or the way she curls her fingers in his hair. It might be the way he teaches her to dance on the beach in the moonlight, or the look on her face when she catches him and Henry asleep on the couch during a football game. It might be stolen kisses before work, long walks around town, introducing him to _Rocky Horror_. It might be a cobbled together family, messy and a little bit broken, but loving just the same.

It doesn't matter.

But it's everything they never knew they needed, and that's what makes it _happily ever after_.


End file.
